Page:Koran - Rodwell - 2nd ed.djvu/495

 unbelievers! They planned what they could not effect; and only disapproved of it because God and His Apostle had enriched them by His bounty! If they repent it will be better for them; but if they fall back into their sin, with a grievous chastisement will God chastise them in this world and the next, and on earth they shall have neither friend nor protector !

Some there are of them who made this agreement with God — &ldquo; If truly He give us of His bounties, we will surely give alms and surely be of the righteous.&rdquo; Yet when he had vouchsafed them of His bounty, they became covetous thereof, and turned their backs, and withdrew afar off:

So He caused hypocrisy to take its turn in their hearts, until the day on which they shall meet Him for that they failed their promise to God, and for that they were liars !

Know they not that God knoweth their secrets and their private talk, and that God knoweth the secret things?

They who traduce such of the faithful as give their alms freely, and those who find nothing to give but their earnings, and scoff at them, God shall scoff at them; and there is a grievous torment in store for them.

Ask thou forgiveness for them, or ask it not, it will be the same. If thou ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God will by no means forgive them. This, for that they believe not in God and His Apostle! And God guideth not the ungodly people.

They who were left at home were delighted to stay behind God's Apostle, and were averse from contending with their riches and their persons for the cause of God, and said, &ldquo; March not out in the heat.&rdquo; : A fiercer heat will be the fire of Hell.&rdquo; Would that they understood this.

Little, therefore, let them laugh, and much let them weep, as the meed of their doings !

If God bring thee back from the fight to some of them, and they ask thy leave to take the field. Say: By no means shall ye ever take the field with me, and by no means shall ye fight an enemy with me : ye were well pleased to sit at home at the first crisis: sit ye at home, then, with those who lag behind.